Chuck’s Place: The Atomic Self

A gathering of all the parts that make up the whole…– Photo by Jan Ketchel

So, this tiniest of units, the atom, what the ancients named the most basic building block of the universe, houses an incredible amount of contained energy. Once the integrity of that unit is split, it is capable of unleashing a surge of vast destructive energy, as the world witnessed in the closing days of WWII at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We are currently living through the unleashing of such powerful destructive energies on a social scale, as the integrity of our unity as a nation has been split by a leader well aware of the latent energy potential contained in such a unit as a United State. His modus operandi has been to tap those violent and ecstatic energy reserves through splitting rhetoric that halves the whole and unleashes lethal force.

On the individual level, that of a human personality, this social phenomenon mirrors the plurality of forces contained within a person. When the unity of personality is split open powerful energies are unleashed from the various factions of self, formerly cooperatively linked, now luxuriating in stretching their powers and vying for control of the self. This is the basis of the term I am employing in this blog, The Atomic Self.

How many times do we begin the day with a specific intent, only to find ourselves fully distracted and engaged in a less desirable activity? Less desirable to whom? I think we would have to say less desirable to one’s conscious ego state; less desirable to the leader of the personality and the working definition of self. But clearly, there is another faction of personality that exists somewhere within the shadows of self that has opposing wants and needs, a will and an energy of its own that supplants the ego’s intent by ‘wasting time’ in ‘unnecessary’ activities.

In fact, the Self is comprised of many factions beyond ego that each possess their own storehouse of energy. Freud identified a few characters: ego, id and superego. Jung expanded the population to include persona, shadow, anima/animus, Self, as well as an ancient inherent dimension to the psyche that includes the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Spiritualists broaden the field even further to include the soul, that which has had countless lives that coexist within the underpinnings of self in the current life.

In fact, the Spiritualist tradition would go so far as to point out that all who are alive in this moment are composed of the cosmic dust and ashes of countless prior generations of life. The notion of a pure bloodline of identity takes a quantum leap if we consider the sins and wisdom of generations past as the building materials of what we all really are, all deeply connected at the atomic level, all siblings sharing the same cosmic dust.

The unity of this oneness is often stretched to the max, as Miranon, a non-physical entity of high intelligence, explained in channeling explorations conducted in the early researches at The Monroe Institute. Miranon suggested we imagine a world of truly interconnected wholeness but all parts in opposition to each other, envisioned as a rubber band stretched in many opposing directions, it’s constituent parts vying for differentiation and supremacy. No matter how far they contort that rubber band it remains the same wholeness, albeit severely contorted and out of balance at times.

Thus, what we call personality is a plurality of characters and lives bound together in a cohesive way to form a consistent identity we call ‘me’. However, beneath this surface cohesion are very powerful energies that may not be well-integrated at all. Jung used the term individuation to define these energies as they actively seek integration and, ultimately, fulfillment in the maturation of an individual life.

People approach counseling when their factions of personality subvert individuation, preferring to assert their personal agendas at the expense of the overall integration of the personality. This results in failure to achieve goals, at minimum, and psychic atomic war at maximum!

The ego’s challenge of leadership with such divisive energetic personality factions is great. If the ego chooses a dictatorial approach to gain control, the rejected factions are likely to withdraw their energy reserves from the personality, whereby causing a depression of energy resource that the ego requires to take action.

Despite this energetic stalemate the ego is charged with restoring balance to the personality. Sometimes this requires surrendering to the archetypal underpinnings of self and allowing, for instance, a flood of tears to release a tide of grief. Sometimes it requires the ego to refuse this archetypal call and hold on in a deeply alienated state until a reconciling thought, feeling, image, or outer happening provides the ticket to a newly resolved balance.

Sometimes the ego must recapitulate the experience of an archaic part of its atomic self that it had no idea existed. This may be presented to the ego in the form a powerful mood or emotional reaction to some environmental trigger. This encounter might require the recapitulation of a repressed memory, a past life, or even a coexistent life at another level of its multidimensional self, lived exclusively at a dream level.

The name of the game is individuation, which integrates the separate components of the atomic self, with all their powerful energies, into a cohesively balanced self, on very deep levels. This is the journey and responsibility of now, inwardly and outwardly. As our earth continues her great transformation, may we, her children, shepherd her changes peacefully, lending our powerful energies to her newly rebalanced configuration.

Never doubt the value of turning inward and taking on the atomic self. Reconciliation at this level is what the world needs now: reconciling vs splitting the atom.